Grass Carp/Asian Carp

[sparkleminnow 0]

I was helping a friend, today, that was interested in trying out his new drift boat. We were looking for an access that was suitable to launch, and we went to a few bridges in search of such. We had stopped to investigate an access at a bridge near his house when I spotted a deeper area that looked as if it might hold some smallmouth. I made a cast into an area that looked promising, and made a few strips to try to get the attention of what might be home. When I saw a shadow slipping in behind my grinder I thought it was a smallmouth, at first. Suddenly I realized it was much larger than any smallmouth. It tracked the topwater, and as I stipped it to tease the fish to strike, it nailed the topwater. As it turns out it was a 9lb Asian Carp! I had them stike at poppers before, but this is realatively uncharted territory. These are a really new fish that some on this board have asked for information about. I can't remember the thread asking the specific questions, but the idea is that I had caught two Asian Carp in two days, in the creeks, and they both came on white flies. One subsurface, and one on a topwater.

 

The invasion of the Asian Carp has begun, and I don't think there is anything that can be done about it. However, they do seem to like topwaters a lot. This might be a new species to pursue on the flyrod. I'm not saying I want them here, but since they are here, you might as well catch them! They fight as hard as Hybrid Striped Bass!!

 

P.S.- I think I need to be more clear, here. The fish I caught was an Amur. I think that it is still in the Asian carp family, but someone correct me if I'm wrong. The Asian carp that our state is worried about is a bit different in appearance.

[fcflyguy 0]

I rember reading someone saying they made up some flies up with easter grass that you use for the kids baskets. if that helps any

Fcflyguy

[bowfin47 0]

Several years ago down in East Texas, there were a couple of fly fishers that noticed that each day as the local lakeside golf course cut the grass, some of the clipping ended in the lake. This morning event was quickly followed by a white amur feeding event.

 

So, these fly fshermen went home and spun green deerhair on bass hooks. They didn't trim these "green hairballs" but rather just left them very rough.

 

The next morning, after grabbing a bag of St. Augustine grass cuttings that had been saved from the cutting of their own yard, they headed back to the lake.

 

After anchoring off the golf course, they proceeded to "chum" with the grass. When the white amur appeared, they tossed in their green hairball flies... and had a ball!!

 

Just be careful, these fish can get very large, and they have been known to jump directly into fisherman who was attempting to land the amur! Getting hit in the chest by a 20-30 lb. piscatorial rocket can be very damaging to one's heath!

 

[Gordon_WarmWater_09 0]

chum with bread. buy 3 loaves or so and break into little pieces. roll them into a ball but dont pack them too tightly. start chunking them out there intill you have a nice surface cover. bream will come first, then carp so have some extra bread to keep throwing out what the bream take away. i have caught them on a spinning reel with bread on the hook. i tied some flies that look like bread but haven't had a chance to try them. if you don't catch the carp you will at least snag a few bluegills.

[S.Mankov 0]

Hi guys, very interesting topic.Last week one of my friends cought carp on nymph but he used match rod.

Greetings from BG

[Ralph Jones 0]

Sparkleminnow, those two white flies, what patterns were they? I've caught carp here in Alabama on a fly tied to look like a mulberry (dark red) and a blackberry. Also on a dropper, a standard GRHE #12, behind a bream popper. It's quite a shock to hook up with 10 lbs.+ of carp on a 4wt. with a 5x tippet. Ralph

[sparkleminnow 0]

Well, I've noticed the last few posts have begun to overlook the fact that these were ASIAN carp I was speaking of, not the common carp. Huge difference. The common carp can be caught with a multitude of different flies, and there is a lot of documentation to that end. No mystery on how to catch them, really. The Asian carp, however, is a realatively new fish that operates quite differently than the common carp. What they eat seems to depend on the individual species. There are reports that the Big Head carp feeds on shad in the Illinois & Mississippi River, while the Amur tends to feed on vegetation....BUT, I have had some success on them with topwater poppers, sliders, etc. This might lead one to consider that they are not exlusively an hebivor. Little time has been devoted to fishing for them, and if you are not a biologist you can only learn through obesrvation what they will take.

 

R. Jones, the one that I took on top was with a Coffey Grinder, and the other was with a sparkleminnow.

[sparkleminnow 0]

This is the sparkleminnow...

[HideHunter 0]

Sparkle - I'd really like to come up with a way to catch the amurs also. Would be by far the best chance to catch a 20 to 40 pound fish on a fly in my area. I only know of one taken on a fly here, and it was on a deer hair "fly" spun and clipped to look like commercial fish food.

 

If we are talking about the same fish, the bighead carp is a plankton eater and actually competes directly with the paddlefish (spoonbill cat) for food. I'd guess catching one on a fly would be an accident.

 

goodluck..g

[Gordon_WarmWater_09 0]

your best bet is to chum them... like i said. you can use commercial fish food or bread. just make a fly that looks like the chum and you should be able to catch one. then hard part is catching them over the bream (or i guess that wierd catfish you were talking about). i made a fly that looked like the commercial fish food but i haven't gotten a chance to try it out on account of i threw my food away. the coons had gotten into it and the maggots were nesting and it was just disgusting. hopefully i can buy a new bag. the stuff comes in 20 pound bags where i live. you might can buy it at your nearest feed store for farmers and such. well here is how i made the commercial food:

 

Materials

Fine Ginger Dubbing

Kiptail

Wood Duck Feather

Thin, Olive Thread

3399 Mustad Hook #10

 

 

1. Start the thread on the hook. Dub a thin Body from the Ginger Dubbing.

2. Now cut a small patch of brown hair from the base of the Kiptail.

3. Use this hair to dub a rough, fat body.

4. Now cut of the fluffy part of the Wood Duck Feather near the base. Keep it and discard the rest of the feather. Tie the fluff tightly to the bottom of the fly.

5. Now, Dub a large fat body from the same Kiptail material over the Wood Duck Fluff.

6. Build up a small head, whip-finish, and Cement.

 

 

for bread i would recomend dubbing a nice fat body out of ginger dubbing and tying that fluffy part of mallard flank to the bottom and let it hand down. that would give the effect of the particles that sink down below the bread. it shouldn't be too hard. the key is to be stealthy and not to spook them... they are extriemly easy to spook. i hope this helps.

 

~gordon~

[HideHunter 0]

Gonna have to try it, Gordon, thanks.

 

Have a pond that's about an acre and a half with about 70 grass carp up to about 8 pounds. Think I'll make a trip to the day old bread store and see if I can enlist the aid of the landowner to "bait" them for me.

 

Any luck there, then I'll go looking for the big ones. Friend of mine snagged a 38 pounder in the tail with a bass plug. Took us 40 minutes to land it.

 

Got to be a riot on a flyrod..

[Gordon_WarmWater_09 0]

In the tail!?!?!?! a 1/2 pound bream in the tail is a hard enough fight. man i can't imagine. anyway, i caught a 20 pounder at my lake with a piece of bread. i can't wait to try it on a fly rod once i get the chance. i have summer reading for ninth grade. we have like 2 weeks left and i have only read one of the three books. i hate reading. o well tell me how it goes and hopefully i can finish my other books and try it out before school starts.

 

in case anyone wants to know my books are Cold Sassy Tree, Ellen Foster, and House on Mango Street.

[sparkleminnow 0]

The two that I took, recently, were on white flies in a creek. The two I took in years past were on poppers in a very large pond. They were extremely skittish. The only way to get them to even look at an artificial was to lead the school by 50-60 yards. I would lay a popper(or slider, I would imagine) well ahead of them. You would need the longest leader you could reasonably cast, and do not work it at all. Rubber legs seemed to be what they keyed on. The color of one of them was black/white/red, while the other was purple/yellow spots. My conclusion is that they are not really that color selective, but that they are attracted to something floating on calm water that might look like food. However, my limited experience can't be considered the final word on that, at all. There just might be a better color for them, though. Only time, and experience will tell. The one thing that I do know is that the owner of the pond fed the fish regularly, and I saw catfish and bluegill come to the surface for the food, but never the Amur. They just happily munched away on the water weeds.

 

Another thing that I think is a certainty, if nothig else. You will, never, ever, get a cast straight to them. If they even see motion of flyline in the air, or a shadow...that's it, done. They will bolt at the slightest motion. I saw a blackbird fly over them 20 feet in the air, and they scattered. So, I think the chumming thing is out. You might chum them up (I still doubt that), but regardless, you'll never get a cast near them. My best strategy has been to spot & stalk them. Sneak up well ahead of them, guess which way that they are going, and lay a cast out in the general area that you hope they are cruising to. I had one cruise under my popper while it was lying motionless, and as it passed under it, I twitched the popper hard enough to move a good bit of water. It whirled around, and slammed it! Another situation, I approached the same way, I knew that I could not drop the popper on top of them, so I just eased it over the small bridge, and set the popper on the water. One of them at the tail end of the school just gently glided over, and grabbed the tail of the popper. It pulled it down, and began swimming off with it. I didn't hook that one, but using the same popper with a stinger hook I took one using the identical method. I think, like bass, it's just curiosity. They bite it just to find out what it is.

 

I tried using subsurface stuff just to see what it would do, but the Amur in the pond just never got interested in it at all. Seems topwater is the way to go.

 

Gordon, are you sure you're not thinking of a regular carp, golden bone, bugle nosed bass, common carp, etc.? The method you are describing will work for them, quite well, but I've never seen Amur want to get anywhere near people. They would spook from just my footfalls on the ground when I was 30 yards away. Any motion, even that from "chumming" by hand would be enough to spook them into not biting anything for a very long time. I've never seen them come up to feed on bread, pellets, or anything else presented to them. These have to be the most skittish fish I know of, by far. A very long cast, presented from a long distance ahead of their cruising path(in anticipation of their arrival), and from a crouched position behind a clump of tall grass was the only way that I could catch them. Every single cast presented directly into their midst would elicit the same response...they would scatter.

 

HideHunter, the pink salmon is a krill feeder, but in Jim Teeny's salmon video, he proved that they could be caught on the fly. He said that everyone he talked to swore that it could not be done. Actually, Kings or coho are not in streams to feed when they are caught. They are there to spawn, but they are caught, nonetheless. Again, Jim Teeny had made a comment that he believed it was just a reflex, or perhaps aggression. They don't mean to feed, but if something gets close enough to them, they just eat without thinking...force of habit, if you will. It's the only explanation I've got.

[Gordon_WarmWater_09 0]

the way i chum is to go to an area with no carp currently feeding, and then throw out a lot of bread. never go to the fish when chumming, let them come to you. i always stand a good 5 feet off shore by or behind a tree. i also caught them on a spinning reeel if you recall from my first comment. i was using clear line which helps. yes i am sure they are grass carp. we stocked the lake with a few to help clean it, but it doesn't reallly work. all they eat are fresh grass clippings when they cut the dam. they are extremely skittish, it scares the mess out of me when i am walking down the dam and one gets frightend and takes off. some of the reasons i am able to get close to them are that the water is very muddy, the banks are fairly deep, i stay behind cover, i am barefooted, and i am experienced... i know my limits and they might have even become slightly accustomed to me. i see them slightly below the surface all the time. i can get a cast off at them but they hardly are interested. they only spook about 1/8 of the casts. i would recomend grabbing a spinning real first and getting to know the fish a bit. like i said, i haven't had the time to try them on the fly yet.

[HideHunter 0]

Gordon and Sparkle - IMHO you are both right. They *will* come to within casting distance on commercial feed, I've seen them do it. And I have cast to the general area wile fishing for 'gills. A young friend of mine just shot one with his bow while feeding. (By the by, it broke his line ((80#)) and swam around with the arrow for 2 weeks before bellying up . About 30 pounds.)

 

But, I've never seen anything so spooky and I've laid a line across them while fishing for bass and bluegill and the "boils" are spectacular. The guy I know who caught one spent *hours* floating his bait where they were feeding.

 

Anyway, I'd really like to catch one.

 

Gordon, I never read anything but Hemingway, Capstick and Ed Zern growing up and I made it fine. Never mind that I've only ever had one "real" job and drive a 12 year old pick up.

 

Yep, Sparks, I knew a guy who caught a spoonbill on a rubber worm, too - so I guess that proves your point. It's possible.